Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (2007)

This quasi-feature film based on the successful Cartoon Network show is, quite simply, one of the damnedest things I've ever seen in a theater. I've seen enough episodes of the show to be familiar with both the characters and the cracked sense of humor that defines them; even so, I was still taken aback by how goddamn weird this thing is. Non sequitors and absurd asides abound here, so much that the digressions more or less become the joke, and as expected the success rate is highly variable. For every bit of business or offbeat line that kills (the Mooninites are always funny), there's another that just sort of lays there. (The odd subplot about Frylock's gender, shoehorned in as an afterthought presumably, falls into the latter category.) The laughter is intermittent, yet I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh as hard at a few things in this as I have at any film in the last couple of years. In particular, there's the opening sequence, a musical number so off-the-cuff brilliant and lung-crushingly funny that it should appear before every movie from now on. In the face of such perverse, willful singularity, a letter grade seems inadequate. The grade below represents my doubts about this kind of weirdness holding up on a second viewing. It does not, however, really represent the volume or frequency of my laughter. Time will tell whether I made the right call.

Grade: B-